Saturday, April 18, 2009

We first met the Shi family in Shi - Introduction and Backstory. I had played through Sue's challenge prior to starting this blog, so this family is now in "free play" mode. They are a nice family, but necessarily all that exciting, and their week was fairly a fairly uneventful run of normal family life this round. So, while I've been trying to start doing these entries in a more storytelling manner, this time it's going to just be a straight "here's what happened" approach again, because no story for them really comes to mind this time. But before we start with what happened for them this week, here's a refresher look at the family:

Thomas had just been born when I stopped playing their lot before, and Tanis and Terrance had only grown up to Child a day or so before.

After playing the Rhodes family, with their somewhat troubled marriage, the first thing I see Sue and Shea doing when I loaded up their house and unpaused it was this:

Clearly, this three-bolt couple isn't having any marital problems. They're actually rather mushy about one another.

After they'd had their fun, I noticed that the garden was needing tended, and some of the plants were ready to harvest, so I sent them outside to work on it. While they were doing so, Shea got his Silver badge, and Sue got her Gold. Yay, now Sue can talk the plants up to thriving before harvesting them.

The next day, Sue went to work and came home with the first of many promotions for the week.

That night, she and Shea helped the twins learn how to do their homework.

The following day brought more promotions, first Shea, and then Sue.

While Sue and Shea were busy chatting up the friends they'd brought home from work, the Games lot guy showed up to give Terrance a membership to the Games secret lot. He'd run out to meet his parents when they got home, and was still caught in the mini-traffic jam of people milling around by the front gate. It took a minute for the games guy to catch up to him.

Before I knew it, it was time for Thomas to transition to Toddler. Shea did the honors in the small nursery room.

He turned out pretty good I think, and thankfully is not a clone of either of his siblings like I've had happen on other lots. I really need to start remembering to roll the dice when I start the game to fend off the firstborn effect. I don't remember if he was born in the same play session that Tanis and Terrance were or not.

With Thomas grown to Toddler now, so began the toddler training drill. Luckily aspiration wasn't much of a problem for Sue or Shea, so Thomas got lots of smart milk to help. First Shea taught him how to talk...

Then Sue got him potty trained...

And finally Sue taught him how to walk. The smart milk glow wore off while they were working on it, so he didn't have it for the picture, but he did have it when they first started.

The next day saw more promotions for Shea and Sue. Sue was really zooming up the career ladder now that she was done having kids. Unfortunately, family life and their careers weren't leaving them much time for keeping in contact with all of their friends.

To round off his toddler skills, Sue sat down with Thomas and taught him a nursery rhyme. I'm not sure if this skill really counts for much besides giving them more toddler animations to do, and I don't always bother with it, but I do when things aren't too hectic on a lot just because I think it's cute. Definitely is my last priority for toddler skills though.

Around this time I finally remembered that I'd been wanting to try out the new solar panels that came with Mansions & Gardens. I'd meant to install some in the Rhodes house, but...then the quads came...and things got rather hectic...and I forgot to. And before that, Uncle Chovie simply didn't have enough money to be able to afford them. But the Shis had plenty of money for them, and things weren't so crazy here, so I finally remembered to find them in the catalog and put some up on the roof. I think I put in 4 of them, and it paid off for them. Will be nice to see the money rolling IN twice a week instead of going out to bills.

The next day brought another promotion for Sue. I'm not sure if there was ever a day this week that she didn't come home with a promotion.

It was also the twins' birthday, but I'd been so wrapped up in something that was going on outside, probably Sue coming home, that I almost missed it. I didn't even realize they were doing the spin until the window popped up asking me to choose Tanis's aspiration. I did manage to kind of catch a shot of them with their "grew up well" icons over their heads in the background of something, so I spliced it in here with the shots of what Tanis and Terrance rolled for their aspirations. Afterward, I also went ahead and rolled secondaries for them. Also, the text for Terrance's LTW was glitched, so I edited in the correct career field for him based on the icon. I forget what the top level job for Gamer is called.

The game was warning me that Sue only had a day or two left before she'd become an Elder, and while I try to resist the urge to keep the sims I like young, there is a rather large age gap between her and Shea, and the kids are all still fairly young, so I had her go over to the genie lamp that was sitting unused in the living room and wish for a long life. It gave her an extra 5 days as an adult. Not sure if I'll extend her life more next time or not.

The next day Sue came home with her final promotion of the week, and the one that put her at the top of the Law career and fulfilled her LTW. Her new LTW is to Become General (Top of Military career), though I didn't get a chance as yet to switch her to that career field.

Tanis also came home with a promotion. I don't usually have my teens get jobs, but since she's a Fortune sim I figured I'd let her have one so she'd be making money to keep her happy, and hopefully get the Overachiever memory too.

Terrance doesn't have a job yet, and not sure if I'll make him get one or not. I just might, if only so he'll get the Overachiever memory to match his twin's (since I'm pretty sure that Tanis will manage to get it).

The last thing of any note that happened this week was that Thomas transitioned well to Child. I had sent Shea out to buy more clothes for the kids prior to all the birthdays, and while I had Tanis and Terrance change into the new ones, I decided that I liked Thomas's outfit well enough that I think I'll just stay with it.

I think Thomas's birthday came in the early evening on the last full day of the week I was playing them for, but nothing else of any note happened the rest of the night before I left the lot early the following morning. Here's a look at how the family looked at the end of the week:

So...sorry this update probably wasn't that exciting, but, well, some sim weeks/lots just aren't :p Maybe Terrance's secondary aspiration of Romance will help spice things up for them more next week. Or maybe one of the others will start doing something interesting. We'll see I guess.

Before I wrap this update up, I wanted to add a few notes about a few changes in approach I've done with this neighborhood, which mostly involves all of the "townie" families....not the true townies, but the Maxis lots in Bluewater and the University that are playable, as well as the Maxis sims that were in the sim bin. Awhile back, I'd added a second "shopping district" subhood that I called Townie Valley and installed all of the sim bin sims in houses there. When I did so, I'd not really intended to play them at all...I just wanted to get them installed in houses with phones so they'd be callable since some of the sims in my main hood were bringing some of them home from work or meeting them on community lots and such. Beyond that I intended to just treat them like townies and only pay attention to them if they happened to hook up with one of the sims from the main 'hood. Now though, I've changed my mind, and have decided that I'd like to keep those families aging and progressing along with the ones in the main 'hood. It will also give me a chance to experiment and try out some things in the game that I haven't really done before, without having to worry so much if I bork things up with beginner's mistakes :p So...I'll be playing through all of them in the various subhoods in between rounds at the main houses. I won't be doing full blown blog entries for each family though, and probably won't be taking a lot of pictures like I do for my main families, but I will post brief summaries about them with at least portrait type pictures and maybe other ones as well if something particularly interesting happens, to at least be providing something of a backstory for them as I go along in case any of them end up joining one of the main families in some fashion. So...with this plan in mind, I've already begun playing the Maxis lots at University, so the next update will be about them. Currently there's the two Maxis Greek houses, the Bright house, and a dorm I dubbed "Townie Dorm" where all the kids in the sim bin got housed. Given how little time for playing the game I've had lately, it may well take me a few weeks to get through them all and get them graduated. Wish me luck.

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comments:

Wow I love this family. there like that perfect little family you see smiling on a commercial buying a car or having fun together at a park. You obviously got them skilling like crazy with all those promotions :Di've got a couple questions.1) what is the firstborn child effect of which you speak of?2) how do you take pictures of them with the pop-ups there?3) how do you get your kids so gorgeous?haha ok you don't have to answer the last one, im just jealous of your pretty sims(:

Sue already had most of her skills maxed from when I was playing her challenge prior to this blog. And before the patch fixed it, she benefitted heavily from the AL physiology bug that let sims skill at lightening speed. She probably would have gotten further in her career before now if she hadn't been spending most her time on maternity leave.The firstborn effect has to do with the way the random number generator that determines personality works. It will always roll things the same way for the first child born in a play session. So if a family has 3 kids, and you shut the game down in between each birth and don't have births in other houses or create any random sims in CAS after you start again, you'll end up with 3 identical kids, at least in personality. If they're the same gender, they usually look identical too.For the pictures, use a screen capture program. I use Fraps, but there are others out there as well.

you did great. as my friend always tells me, you cant always have a soap opera week .. its okay to have an average week occassionally.doesn't mean i like having 'em either! hehthe kids grew up cuties and i like Thomas' outfit too. I tend to buy that one or ones like it actually.

The nursery rhyme can give the toddlers charisma...both when they're learning or singing later. I had one toddler who wanted to sing it all the time and if no one was paying attention to her, she'd just sing it by herself. So cute!